Industrial Confined Space Rescue

I`m looking for any member of an industrial confined space rescue team or fire dept.if you are designated the primary responder to an industrial confined space incident. I would like to know if your rescue team is notified or put on standby anytime a permit confined space entry is being done in your facility? Are all team members put on standby? Do you stage equiptment on scene when ever a permit entry is being done? Are your spaces preplanned?
I also would like to know a little bit about what type of facility and what type of vessels you have and use for training.
I belong to International Papers, Kaukauna Wi Facility`s confined space rescue/fire responce team.

I am an Engineer at a Nuclear Power plant. We have permit required confined space entries into piping, tanks, and pits. We have an on site rescue team that is made of from members of the on site fire brigade and rescue (EMTs) team. We have a requirement that at least two members of the confined space team must be present for the duration of the entry and must be briefed prior to the entry. All entries are pre-planned with some being continuous for several week durations. For these, we will stage our essential equipemnt in the area.

We make 100% full scale mock-ups of the larger jobs. This allows the team to practice under the same conditions that would be required for a rescue.

We have been very fortunate and have not had to make a rescue in the last ten years. There was a fatality back in the 70's here where a worker became unresponsive down in a 65 foot deep pit. The rescurer went down and died do to oxygen deficiency. The original worker was rescued and revived.

I'm also employed at a nuclear generating station where we, the fire department, are responsible for the confined space program. All requests for confined space entries go through us and our members perform at least the initial monitoring. For "Permit Required" spaces we may rig the entry and retrieval systems prior to entry or we may stage equipment in the area. As far as pre planning, it's generally on a case by case basis. When a space is entered that poses a higher than usual challenge, a plan is drawn up and reviewed with each shift until the job is done.

Oh man, how many nukes are among us? I'm a safety tech at our local plant and also on the emergency response team as ff/emt/rescue along with the plant operators.

All CS permits go through our department and the setup is pretty much similar to haligan84s except that we only do the monitoring if the work group requests it.

All known spaces are identified and preplanned. All confined spaces are permit required.

Vertical entry spaces require full body harness and a lifeline and retrieval system, unless it will pose a greater hazard by entanglement, then it must be staged ready for use.

We have several "low hazard" spaces that are routinely entered for routine inspection and/or maintenance. As there are several of these and there may be several worked in any one day, it is generally expected that work will be ongoing in them and the team is aware of this. Spaces of this nature would be rooms that meet the standards requirements, but do not have any potential hazards except low O2 (e.g. pipe chases).

Certain spaces get what we call a heightened level of awareness and the team is specifically made aware of these entries. These spaces aren't entered that often, and consists of resin mixing beds, storage tanks, utility vaults, piping and like that as well as the rooms mentioned above (depending on what type of work being done in it).

Anything considered high risk gets rescue equipment staged prior to job start. On one particular space, a safety tech rides the spider basket down 140' with the worker to monitor for any H2S buildup.